October 01, 2013

pears, baked

Though I eagerly await - c'mon Harper Collins - the arrival of Nigel Slater's newbie, Eat, thankfully there's a lot of backlist worth trawling. The grocer, whose name suddenly escapes me, on High Street in Woodend had a tray of pears for $1.99 last Friday morning. Snapped them up fast as it's pretty late in the season and they looked, in their plastic wrap, forlorn. Knowing they'd be not quite right, I also knew they'd be best cooked in some way. A cake, however, seemed beyond my capabilities. Often does these days.

I've found Slater's Tender: Volume II a bit hit and miss, and frankly I've been a bit of a cow about it publically, but his baked/roasted/bloody simple fruit recipes have, without exception, been perfect. A poached pear leaves me cold, something not helped by having a partner who deems fruit for dessert as Not Dessert, but, sometimes, I happen to like a fudgy baked pear. Slater's idea is simplicity itself, doctored a little to suit what I have in my pantry:

Preheat your oven to 200 C. Take 4 pears and peel them. Slater says not to halve them, but the seductive accompanying picture defied that instruction, thus I halved mine. Besides, this made it much easier to dig out the cores later, but over to you. Nigel knows of what he speaks. Halve longitudinally, or not, at will. In a baking dish that will fit them snuggly, mix 4 tablespoons of Pedro Ximinez sherry (or Marsala, as Slater does) with 3 tablespoons of caster sugar and a 50g slice of unsalted butter. Arrange the pears on top in a single layer and bake for 1 hour until "soft as butter".

Possibly the sexiest thing to pass these lips all year. I'm keen to try less sugar and butter next time, and while they were wonderful alone, if you dig out the cores with a teaspoon then scatter crumbled amaretti over the top, your partner may just be able to suspend disbelief.

Nigel Slater has become part of the foodie parthenon in recent years, for someone who is so prolific he maintains an amazing creative freshness. I'm really looking forward to his new book. His baked fruit recipes always tend to be a revelation

hi there. i haven't been perusing blogs in so long ... but yours is the only one i still have on my list to check in with once in a while, lucy. i have recently realized that my sweet tooth is not pathological, for all of the ever-present social nervousness about sugar consumption. i actually need some sweet in my palate to balance my system. maple is the best for me, honey and molasses not so much ... and so i have been gently exploring ayurvedic food and the energetics of food. it is a delicate knot to tease open ... the food habits and mental comforts around the foods i grew up eating are so strong ... but there is more of an ease and lightness in my cooking now that wasn't there before. grains and fruit for breakfast, sometimes a savory dosa or cheela or dal, lunch is the heaviest biggest meal of our day, and if there's a sweet, we often eat that first! simple soup for an early supper. and we've been applying the awareness of eating slowly enough that we can feel when we're almost full, and stop there. freshly prepared. organic. no leftovers. we are both feeling more clear, a little bit at a time. and there's more energy available, but it's a gentle, quiet energy. oh, how nice it is to see you still seeing things, and cooking things, and writing about that.